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ways_back_room2017-12-20 07:15 pm
annalalaith) wrote in ways_back_room2017-12-20 07:15 pm
Advent Day 8!
So today we have two.
A cute bird by Char.
And Tom's Entry.
Apparently, you put baubles on Christmas trees. Tinsel, baubles and a star, that's what the book in the library said.
He's never heard of tinsel before, and he doesn't have a small stylised representation of a void-bourne ball of gas. So Sahaal's dug out some baubles from the depths of his room, to use as his contribution to the Christmas tree. He comes down the stairs from his room early in the morning, carrying a worn musette bag under his arm.
The tree is a real one, brought in from outside to fill the air with the scent of pine needles and bark. Someone has already decorated it, stringing multicoloured lights around the boughs and winding lengths of shiny material he assumes is tinsel around the trunk. Combined with the fireplace gently roaring away, the dim, low-key lighting of the wall lamps and the holly wreaths on every door, the bar feels very festive. Or at least, it would if Sahaal had a concept of festive.
He walks over, placing the bag on a nearby armchair. Carefully, he opens the worn cloth flap, emblazoned with the black letters 'U.S Army Air Force', to reveal his decorations. His hand reaches in, and pulls out an autogun shell casing, the brass gleaming in the firelight. A hole has been drilled through the top of it and a cord run through, as Sahaal has with most of the other items in the bag. On the bottom, there is a small line of imprinted text circling the indentation left by the firing pin.
7.62mm - DM - CRSNXXXIII
-------
Smoke fills the air. It comes from the tapestries on the walls, ignited by flamer units and slowly turning to ash on the wind. It comes from the embers of incendiary grenades, their shrapnel pitting the cratered, blackened stone. It comes from the burning city outside, woodsmoke blowing through the empty windowframes.
Most of all, though, the smoke carries the sweet scent of fyceline and cordite, curling as it does from the cooling gun barrels of the 33rd Coralisan.
Sahaal looks on at the corpses of fifty men and women slumped behind a crude barricade of sandbags and repurposed desks. In front of them, nearly twice that number of enemy dead are sprawled over the floor of this city's administration hall. Most of them still clutch rifles as well, of poorer local manufacture.
Sahaal's throat tenses, and something in his eyes hardens. He knows these dead. If not by name, then by face, from watching drills on the training grounds deep within the Umbrea Insidior. Others he knows from banquets put on by the command elements of the Expeditionary Fleet, over his past decade of service. He recognises majors, captains, lieutenants, a smattering of sergeants. All once soldiers in the service of the Imperium, proud Army troopers. No longer.
Their faces have slackened in death, and their once-khaki tunics have been so soaked in their blood that it seems that they had always been dyed a dried sickening brown. A sea of brass surrounds them, dotted with the small grey islands of empty magazines. Someone in the unit has hung the regimental colours from a column, the tattered battle flag still flapping in the wind. Despite the destruction, there is a small twinge of pride in his metaphorical heart. There are very few better ways for soldiers to die.
He knows there is protocol to follow. Imperial bodies are not left on the battlefield for the carrion crows. As soon as his vox-transmission reaches the warzone's command echelon, then a series of events kick off. Funerary arrangements are made, body bags dispatched and pre-dug grave plots allocated. Reports will be auto-transcribed and archived into great stacks, not to see the light of day for decades, perhaps centuries. Citations will be written up, medals despatched on courier ships to next of kin on Coralis. There will be account written, poems penned, so formulaic Sahaal can hear them now. The glorious last stand of the Thirty-Third, heroes to a man.
But, that is in the future. Right here, right now, as Sahaal looks on, he doesn't see heroes. He sees soldiers at rest, finally. His ceramite-encased fist slams against his chestplate, the echo ringing through the vaulted hall as he gives the old Terran salute.
Then, he blink-clicks one of the items on his retinal display and opens a vox-channel. All the time he is speaking, his eyes never leave the 33rd.
-------------
Sahaal sets the shell casing aside, the dull cylinder of brass laid with care on the plush arm of the chair. He reaches into the bag, and pulls out another item. This time, there was no need to drill a hole through it, because its makers had kindly provided one for him.
--------
"I'm surprised, traitor."
The Dark Angel stands like a knight at rest, sword pointed towards the scorched deck of the hangar bay. Both his gauntleted hands are wrapped around the pommel, the black ceramite in contrast with the rich red silk of the handle's wrappings. He goes unhelmed, his long ash-blond hair blowing in the breeze created by the air circulation units. Trinkets hang from his belt, symbols of loyalty and heritage mixed in with small battle trophies. His eyes squint into the pitch blackness, trying to pierce the gloom beyond the thin halo of light cast by his suit's shoulder lamp.
Sahaal stands across from him, his midnight blue warplate blending into the darkness. Lightning crackles across his claws, the foot-long lengths of superconductive metal humming with power and suppressed bloodlust. The bay is cold as well as dark, one step up from the open void, and the idling thrusters on his bank provide the only faint heat. "Why ever would you say that, little Angel?"
Small puffs of vapour accompany the Dark Angel's reply. "Because you are a Night Lord, Captain Sahaal. Because you are an honourless, motherless bastard who doesn't have a shred of decency in his body." He laughs, a small bitter bark of humour. "From all that I have heard, I can scarcely believe you would duel me in the traditional manner."
Sahaal chuckles back, his lips twisted behind his helm into a sardonic grin. "You heard correctly." With that, he activates the two thrusters on his back, leaping into the frigid air. A shouted Calibanite curse follows him up into the steel ribcage of the rafters. His fingers grab hold of one of the thick girders and he anchors himself in place, leaning back and looking back down to the deck below.
His tongue depresses the external address stud twice, sending two quick bursts of static across a pre-selected vox-channel. The Dark Angel, for all his pride, is right. No Night Lord would even consider an honourable, fair fight.
One of the grated deckplating sections slides up and out of its brackets silently, the battered runnels oiled especially for this moment. From the maintenance crawlspace below, a midnight blue figure unfolds, the dull gunmetal slab of a bolt pistol in his hand. There is no hesitation.
Two bolt shells rocket into the loyalist, one to the back of each lightly armoured kneecap. He goes down roaring, more from rage than the pain of the shattered joints. More Night Lords emerge from the gloom of the hangar's corners. A pair come from behind the solid steel mass of a wall stanchion, their Nostraman chainglaves whirring in anticipation. From where he is on his hands and knees, the Angel has no chance. He still tries, Sahaal will give him that, and he gets off a few conservative swings of his sword. That's all.
The glave-wielders, Nadrak and Lothar, follow his orders for once. Lothar slices into the fibre-bundles of the Angel's wrist, making him drop his sword in an involuntary twitch of dying machinery. Nadrak holds his chainglave to the loyalist's throat, stopping any further resistance in its tracks.
Sahaal drops from the rafters, his boots clanging on the deck. He walks over to the I Legion champion, and kneels at his eye level. "Like I said. You heard correctly." The loyalist's eyes barely have time to go wide before Sahaal decapitates him with a single swipe of his claws.
The last thing he hears is the mocking laugher of the four Raptors.
---------------
Sahaal turns the icon over in his hand. It's a small thing really, a winged sword cast in metal, the symbol of the Dark Angels Legion. He has threaded a new chain through the hole on the miniature pommel, the previous one having broken when he tore it from the champion's armour.
Both the icon and the shell casing are hung on the tree, from branches about his chest level. The next item is not so easy to find a place for.
------------
As far as fortifications Sahaal's assaulted in his long service to the Eighth Legion, the Imperial Palace is definitely the most beautiful. Wide, high galleries with ornate columns and frescoed ceilings serve as killing grounds. Rich red Astartes lifeblood is spilt across gold-flecked marble floors. Statues of war heroes look down aquiline noses onto the dead and the living alike, judging in their own inscrutable way.
Sahaal turns at the sound of running footsteps. He's kneeling over a pair of Imperial Fists, pulling ammunition and supplies from their armour. Even as relatively close as the Raptors are to the outer walls, the fighting is as thick and heavy as he's ever seen it. The idea of supply lines here is a joke, and an unfunny one at that.
Behind him, Sal Gosg of his command unit skids on the cracked marble and comes to a stop. "Captain, we have to go. Now."
Sahaal stands up and looks him in the eye lenses. "Why? New orders?"
"No." In that one syllable, Sahaal hears something completely new to him. An Astartes' voice wavering. Not quite fear, but as damned close as Sal Gosg can get. "I don't think we're going to be getting any more orders for a while."
He can live without orders, no problem. But, right then, something deep down in Sahaal's gut hardens. Instinctively, he knows that something is very, very wrong. "What do you mean?"
"Lothar picked up a vox-channel, over in the other hall. It's the Sixteenth, Captain, they're screaming into the airwaves. They're saying the Warmaster is dead."
Sahaal shakes his head. The Warmaster, dead? The idea that you could kill Horus Lupercal, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, general in human history and the architect of the Rebellion is laughable. You might as well try and extinguish a star or create an orkoid diplomat. It's impossible.
But, as he tunes his helm's vox, the impossible is made reality. True to Sal Gosg's word, all of the Sixteenth Legion's channels are filled with weeping and wailing. A thousand hardened transhuman veterans, all mourning with one voice. He can hear officers he knows, men who have judged the fate of planets and razed civilisations to ash on the wind breaking down in his ears. Mostly, it is garbled gibberish, words reduced to meaningless jumbles of sound forced out through choked-up throats. Some of it, however, is more than audible.
"...our father, our father, our father..."
"...no! He is lost! We are lost..."
"...this is Lieutenant Nevarseran, I can confirm. Lupercal is... is. He is fallen, may the Powers have mercy..."
"...who did this, lord, who did this to you..."
"...damn the Emperor to a thousand hells for this..."
Slowly, Sahaal pulls off his helm, silencing the cacophony of voices. His black eyes glint in the faint light. He walks over to the nearest statue, a granite effigy of some regimental commander from Feal's World, her chest adorned with stone medals and carved citations. Without a word, he smashes his armoured fist into the statue's leg.
That strike is followed by another, and another, and another, and another, and another. Chunks of granite fly off, smashing against the marble floor tiles. Splinters slice his bare pale face, and blood streams down his face. He ignores it, and keeps punching. All his frustration, all his pent-up anger, all the memories of the comrades and brothers that have fallen for Horus and his rebellion, it all gets channelled into his balled-up fists.
He hears a scream of rage coming from somewhere nearby, and it takes him a second, in his anger, to figure out that it's him that's making it. A red haze descends over him, and his vision narrows. Only his fists and the stone under them remain in the entire universe. All of this. All the struggle, all the battles, all the death and despair that he and his Raptors endured because it was told to them that they could bring about a better Imperium. All for nought.
He knows, even through the anger. This was their one shot, and they threw it away. There will never be another. They have failed. Now all that remains is to find out what failure, and more importantly, fate, has in store for them.
Sahaal stops punching, and he drops his fists to his side. His fingers loosen. He loosens. He turns back to Sal Gosg.
"Order a full retreat. Now. I want every single Raptor still breathing back aboard the Umbrea Insidior as soon as possible. I don't care what targets they think they have, we're pulling out."
"Captain?"
Then, Sahaal says the words that make all of this final in his mind. "We're quitting Terra, Sal. It's over. We lost. All that's left is to pick up the pieces."
---------
He doesn't know where he can put this decoration. A fist-sized chunk of granite, a service medal still visible on the time-blurred stone, rests in his hand. Cracks spiderweb across its surface, testament to the force that he hit it with all those centuries ago. Like most of the rest of his baubles, he has drilled a hole in the middle of it, and strung a thick loop of cord through it.
It's much heavier than its size would suggest, and he places it on a few different branches before he finds one strong and thick enough to hold it. With the piece of statue placed, he turns back to the bag. The next trinket Sahaal picks out is also the first on his list not of human manufacture.
-----------
One of the sniper's shots finally hits him, and in a way, he's glad. It means Sahaal finally knows what he's up against.
It strikes his left pauldron, and a swarm of angry red impact warning runes flash up on his helm display. He blinks them away, and glances down. A deep, thin furrow has been gouged across the midnight ceramite, taking with it a couple of painted-on unit citations. He'll need to paint them back on tonight, after he repairs the plate itself.
The shot was from a las-weapon, he can tell from the scorch marks, but he knew that already. It's hard to miss blue bolts of light searing through the low-hanging mist. It is the tight width of the scar, and the fact that it's cut through at least three layers of armour that lets Sahaal know what it came from. An Imperial Guard weapon, with its crude vat-grown focusing crystal arrays, would have have barely scratched the paint.
No. This is eldar work. Only they have laser weaponry powerful enough to cut like this. Behind his helm, Sahaal smiles. He hasn't fought eldar since Equixus, and after that? He feels he's due some revenge.
The only downside is that he'll have to use his bolter. Eldar snipers are too elusive for even his claws, and trying to get much closer will only get him shot through the eye. Even going from tree to tree like he did when he hunted down Guide would be risky. Ranged is the only way Sahaal can approach this.
He pulls his bolter from its mag-lock and readies, the familiar weight settling into his hands. With a flick of his thumb, Sahaal clicks the safety catch off. Carefully, he pokes out the skull-mouthed barrel and fires off a shell. A second later, and the dull crump of a detonation bounces off the densely packed trees. The eldar sniper is quick to respond, a las-bolt through the trunk so close to his head his helm systems note the temperature spike.
There is no way that wasn't intentional, and somehow, that makes it worse. Not only is he being toyed with, but that this xenos thinks that he can be toyed with and that Sahaal is that weak as to let him. He snarls. Time to kick it up a notch, as they say on Earth television.
A Primaris-issue shock grenade goes out first, the fist-sized cylinder landing by the sniper's perch. Blinding white light explodes out from it, accompanied by a burst of deafening, raucous noise. Two more explosives follow, a smoke canister and a frag grenade in quick succession. White phosphorus haze hisses out into the warm air, covering the forest floor with a low-hanging chemical fog. It forms a barrier nigh impenetrable to normal eyes, and Sahaal has to use his preysight to see the frag grenade go off.
It does so spectacularly. The miniature explosive detonates against the trunk, breaking into the bark with a hundred shrapnel saws. With a creak of splintered wood, the tree topples, taking with it the eldar sniper's perch. Swiftly, Sahaal whips round the trunk, his bolter up and the targeting reticles searching for his prey.
Almost immediately, he sets eyes on the sniper. The tree is falling fast, but he catches a few impressions before it hits the ground. Long thin limbs flailing against gravity, nimble fingers grasping for anything to arrest its fall. A hooded cloak, the same dull green as the forest canopy, gemstones woven into the fabric glittering in the light. Violet pinprick eyes staring at him from shadowed sockets, the hatred in them focused on him and him alone.
Then the tree falls below the smoke, and takes it out of sight. Sahaal grins. Now the hunt begins.
He swings out from behind the trunk, and with a jump pack-aided bound, leaps into one of the more venerable trees. The branches below him shudder, but hold. Looking down from his new perch, Sahaal watches as the sniper rolls with the fall and starts running north, its alien long rifle cradled in his arms. The Night Lord follows eagerly, going from treetop to treetop like a primitive ape with a pair of thrusters.
Leaves cascade down to the ground under his weight. The roar of the twin turbines cuts through the air like nothing before it, silencing any natural sound. Every few seconds, Sahaal fires off a shot from his bolter, an enticement to the xenos to keep running. Most miss, cratering the soft dirt around his prey's feet. A couple hit, one tearing a hole in the lavish cloak, one glancing off whatever armour is concealed under it with enough force that it leaves the sniper's left arm hanging limply by its side.
Sahaal's focus on the hunt is total, so when the trees run out and he finds himself at the edge of a small clearing, he almost falls. Gasping in surprise, he quickly jams his foot-claws into the thick bark to steady himself. The gap in the forest below is not a natural one. What looks like some sort of ruined structure of white alien stone stands in it, long left to the weeds and moss that now cover it. Most of it has collapsed into rubble hidden beneath the long grass, but one or two of the walls still stand, framing a freestanding arch that provides the clearing's centrepiece.
He activates his preysight again, and the world dissolves into the deep blues and bright orange and yellow shades of thermal vision. His head pans around the area, looking for heat signatures. There, by one of larger wall chunks, he sees a patch of shimmering red. With a blink, he deactivates the specialised lenses. Sahaal's world becomes high-contrast colour once again, and he looks again at the spot.
The preysight did not lie. A corner of the eldar's cloak pools out from behind the stone, the fabric a few shades of green too rich to be natural. Something unpleasant glitters in the Night Lord's black eyes. He draws his bolter for the second time today, and with a stroke of the trigger, he fires.
A shell smashes against the stone, driving the sniper from its temporary haven. It rolls into cover behind a broken pillar, and Sahaal's shells follow it. Usually, he wouldn't consider using his bolter in a situation like this, for why would he kill with a firearm when he could deploy the sharp purity of his blades? But, he is enjoying the role reversal in truth, firing down at a near-helpless target. Let the alien have a taste of its own tactics.
More shots break off ragged chunks from the pillar, and the sniper jerks from its hiding spot again. This time, Sahaal gives it no respite. As soon as it is out of sight, his grenades make it dash for the open. In this way he establishes a pattern. The sniper scuttles into shelter. He forces it out. Rinse. Repeat.
This goes on what feels like a few seconds, in the heat of the hunt, but what is according to his helm's chrono two and a half minutes. An eternity in a firefight. He sighs. Perhaps this might have to end soon. A shame, in his opinion, become this game of cat and mouse is quite fun. But, all good things must come to an end.
Reluctantly, he pulls out a pair of frag grenades and tosses them behind the windworn boulder the eldar is currently cowering against. They go off simultaneously, sending a ball of fire and shrapnel into the air. As soon as the sniper runs out into the open, bleeding and trailing smoke from its cloak, Sahaal draws a bead on it with his bolter and fires.
He misses. At the last second, the xenos dodges to the side, letting the bolt shell carve a divot in the earth. Sahaal curses in ugly Nostraman and aims again, but it slides behind the central arch. As he looks on, trying to calculate the best angle to get the bastard from, a small spark appears in the centre of the arch.
A sound like a whip-crack sounds through the clearing, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. More sparks flare into existence in the arch, the embers of some dying fire being relit and given new life. They pull together, forming a ball of light bright enough that Sahaal's already powerful flare-buffers dim even further to compensate. The ball expands, crackling with sorcerous purplish-blue energy, into a round, roiling portal, three meters by two in the middle of the bone-like arch.
Sahaal recognises it immediately. The arch must be an eldar transportation gateway, one of their strange devices halfway between magic and technology. He's seen them before, on Equixus, on Praetoria and on half a dozen other worlds. Urgency plucks at his mind, overriding everything else. He can't let the sniper escape.
In an instant, he launches himself from the tree and hits the ground, rolling into a run without a pause. His feet crush down the long grass as he sprints towards the arch, his breath ragged in his ears. The thin mist parts around his armoured form. Sahaal's world narrows again, his perception akin to optics focused on the gateway.
A flash of green on white, and he jerks his head towards it. The sniper darts out from behind the curving length of stone, its cloak flowing behind it. It stops an inch from the portal, and looks back at Sahaal's charging figure with a mix of arrogance and amusement on its elfin face. A delicate artist's hand reaches for a bag at its waist, and places it on a broken chunk of wall to its side. Then, with a flourish and the furious Night Lord only feet away, it turns and steps through to safety.
The portal snaps shut behind it with a burp of crackling ozone. Sahaal skids to a stop an arm's length for the now dead arch. A stream of curses come from his vox-grille, an indelicate mix of Imperial Low and High Gothic, Nostraman, Eighth Legion war-cant, Bar-standard English, the primitive prison-slang of his birth and a dozen other tongues. He leans his head back and roars, the static-laced howl of a hunter denied his prey. His balled-up hand pounds against the bone-like stonework of the gateway, but to no avail. Whatever it is made of is tougher than his gene-forged fist, and he is denied even that little satisfaction.
Sahaal steps back and tries to force down his anger. He opens up his helm's external vents, letting crisp forest air flow in. He takes a deep breath, and another, and another, until his choler subsides. Finally, when he feels like he isn't going to explode with rage, he reaches over and picks up the bag the sniper left.
It is a small pouch, made of some sort of soft cobalt velvet and sealed with an ornate bronze clasp. His armoured fingers unseal it, and tip the contents onto the chunk of stone. A tiny icon, shaped like an eldar rune, and a tube of paper tied with twine fall out. Carefully, Sahaal cuts the knot with his combat knife and unrolls the paper.
It is a message. That much is clear, but for a few long moments, he can't read it. As he stares at it, racking his brain for any clue as to what it could be written in, he recognises one of the words. Talonmaster. His title, scribed in some dialect of High Gothic he does not know. Sahaal, armed with this knowledge, moves his finger along the spidery letters, looking for the inevitable traces of human tongues he knows.
This is what spending ten thousand years in the Warp has done to him. Languages and parlances have sprung up, evolved on the lips on men and women who died long after he was lost, and died themselves, their linguistic remnants absorbed into other dialects to begin the cycle anew. So it goes, on into infinity. Whatever the sniper wrote in is a creation of one of these cycles, familiar but far removed.
Sahaal traces along the words with his finger, mouthing the syllables behind his helm in some absurd parody of a small child learning to read. Slowly, he gets the gist of it. This is what he thinks it says:
"You may be able to fight time and space, Talonmaster, but you cannot fight fate. Ulthwé will not be denied its vengeance."
He laughs, and crumples up the paper. Let them try.
-------------
The paper he left at the ruins to wash away in the next rain. The message tube he filled with fyceline putty and used as a crude grenade back in mid-November. The rune, however, is hung between a pair of plastic pine cones.
For something only the size of a poker chip, it is surprisingly detailed. A stylised eye made of blocky lines and thin curves carved from some featherlight alien material weeping a single pearl tear. The cord of black silk that hangs through the abstract iris leads Sahaal to believe that it must have been some sort of wearable charm before he got his hands on it. Regardless, now it's a Christmas tree ornament.
Sahaal steps back and looks at his four additions. They might not be typical, but they're his and they're what he has to offer. His line of work, his life even, does not lend itself to collecting showy trinkets and decorations. War trophies will have to do. Perhaps that's what the book meant, that those celebrating should hang objects with memories behind them.
He's still not sure what all the little multi-coloured balls of metal and ceramic are in aid of though..
A cute bird by Char.
And Tom's Entry.
Apparently, you put baubles on Christmas trees. Tinsel, baubles and a star, that's what the book in the library said.
He's never heard of tinsel before, and he doesn't have a small stylised representation of a void-bourne ball of gas. So Sahaal's dug out some baubles from the depths of his room, to use as his contribution to the Christmas tree. He comes down the stairs from his room early in the morning, carrying a worn musette bag under his arm.
The tree is a real one, brought in from outside to fill the air with the scent of pine needles and bark. Someone has already decorated it, stringing multicoloured lights around the boughs and winding lengths of shiny material he assumes is tinsel around the trunk. Combined with the fireplace gently roaring away, the dim, low-key lighting of the wall lamps and the holly wreaths on every door, the bar feels very festive. Or at least, it would if Sahaal had a concept of festive.
He walks over, placing the bag on a nearby armchair. Carefully, he opens the worn cloth flap, emblazoned with the black letters 'U.S Army Air Force', to reveal his decorations. His hand reaches in, and pulls out an autogun shell casing, the brass gleaming in the firelight. A hole has been drilled through the top of it and a cord run through, as Sahaal has with most of the other items in the bag. On the bottom, there is a small line of imprinted text circling the indentation left by the firing pin.
7.62mm - DM - CRSNXXXIII
-------
Smoke fills the air. It comes from the tapestries on the walls, ignited by flamer units and slowly turning to ash on the wind. It comes from the embers of incendiary grenades, their shrapnel pitting the cratered, blackened stone. It comes from the burning city outside, woodsmoke blowing through the empty windowframes.
Most of all, though, the smoke carries the sweet scent of fyceline and cordite, curling as it does from the cooling gun barrels of the 33rd Coralisan.
Sahaal looks on at the corpses of fifty men and women slumped behind a crude barricade of sandbags and repurposed desks. In front of them, nearly twice that number of enemy dead are sprawled over the floor of this city's administration hall. Most of them still clutch rifles as well, of poorer local manufacture.
Sahaal's throat tenses, and something in his eyes hardens. He knows these dead. If not by name, then by face, from watching drills on the training grounds deep within the Umbrea Insidior. Others he knows from banquets put on by the command elements of the Expeditionary Fleet, over his past decade of service. He recognises majors, captains, lieutenants, a smattering of sergeants. All once soldiers in the service of the Imperium, proud Army troopers. No longer.
Their faces have slackened in death, and their once-khaki tunics have been so soaked in their blood that it seems that they had always been dyed a dried sickening brown. A sea of brass surrounds them, dotted with the small grey islands of empty magazines. Someone in the unit has hung the regimental colours from a column, the tattered battle flag still flapping in the wind. Despite the destruction, there is a small twinge of pride in his metaphorical heart. There are very few better ways for soldiers to die.
He knows there is protocol to follow. Imperial bodies are not left on the battlefield for the carrion crows. As soon as his vox-transmission reaches the warzone's command echelon, then a series of events kick off. Funerary arrangements are made, body bags dispatched and pre-dug grave plots allocated. Reports will be auto-transcribed and archived into great stacks, not to see the light of day for decades, perhaps centuries. Citations will be written up, medals despatched on courier ships to next of kin on Coralis. There will be account written, poems penned, so formulaic Sahaal can hear them now. The glorious last stand of the Thirty-Third, heroes to a man.
But, that is in the future. Right here, right now, as Sahaal looks on, he doesn't see heroes. He sees soldiers at rest, finally. His ceramite-encased fist slams against his chestplate, the echo ringing through the vaulted hall as he gives the old Terran salute.
Then, he blink-clicks one of the items on his retinal display and opens a vox-channel. All the time he is speaking, his eyes never leave the 33rd.
-------------
Sahaal sets the shell casing aside, the dull cylinder of brass laid with care on the plush arm of the chair. He reaches into the bag, and pulls out another item. This time, there was no need to drill a hole through it, because its makers had kindly provided one for him.
--------
"I'm surprised, traitor."
The Dark Angel stands like a knight at rest, sword pointed towards the scorched deck of the hangar bay. Both his gauntleted hands are wrapped around the pommel, the black ceramite in contrast with the rich red silk of the handle's wrappings. He goes unhelmed, his long ash-blond hair blowing in the breeze created by the air circulation units. Trinkets hang from his belt, symbols of loyalty and heritage mixed in with small battle trophies. His eyes squint into the pitch blackness, trying to pierce the gloom beyond the thin halo of light cast by his suit's shoulder lamp.
Sahaal stands across from him, his midnight blue warplate blending into the darkness. Lightning crackles across his claws, the foot-long lengths of superconductive metal humming with power and suppressed bloodlust. The bay is cold as well as dark, one step up from the open void, and the idling thrusters on his bank provide the only faint heat. "Why ever would you say that, little Angel?"
Small puffs of vapour accompany the Dark Angel's reply. "Because you are a Night Lord, Captain Sahaal. Because you are an honourless, motherless bastard who doesn't have a shred of decency in his body." He laughs, a small bitter bark of humour. "From all that I have heard, I can scarcely believe you would duel me in the traditional manner."
Sahaal chuckles back, his lips twisted behind his helm into a sardonic grin. "You heard correctly." With that, he activates the two thrusters on his back, leaping into the frigid air. A shouted Calibanite curse follows him up into the steel ribcage of the rafters. His fingers grab hold of one of the thick girders and he anchors himself in place, leaning back and looking back down to the deck below.
His tongue depresses the external address stud twice, sending two quick bursts of static across a pre-selected vox-channel. The Dark Angel, for all his pride, is right. No Night Lord would even consider an honourable, fair fight.
One of the grated deckplating sections slides up and out of its brackets silently, the battered runnels oiled especially for this moment. From the maintenance crawlspace below, a midnight blue figure unfolds, the dull gunmetal slab of a bolt pistol in his hand. There is no hesitation.
Two bolt shells rocket into the loyalist, one to the back of each lightly armoured kneecap. He goes down roaring, more from rage than the pain of the shattered joints. More Night Lords emerge from the gloom of the hangar's corners. A pair come from behind the solid steel mass of a wall stanchion, their Nostraman chainglaves whirring in anticipation. From where he is on his hands and knees, the Angel has no chance. He still tries, Sahaal will give him that, and he gets off a few conservative swings of his sword. That's all.
The glave-wielders, Nadrak and Lothar, follow his orders for once. Lothar slices into the fibre-bundles of the Angel's wrist, making him drop his sword in an involuntary twitch of dying machinery. Nadrak holds his chainglave to the loyalist's throat, stopping any further resistance in its tracks.
Sahaal drops from the rafters, his boots clanging on the deck. He walks over to the I Legion champion, and kneels at his eye level. "Like I said. You heard correctly." The loyalist's eyes barely have time to go wide before Sahaal decapitates him with a single swipe of his claws.
The last thing he hears is the mocking laugher of the four Raptors.
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Sahaal turns the icon over in his hand. It's a small thing really, a winged sword cast in metal, the symbol of the Dark Angels Legion. He has threaded a new chain through the hole on the miniature pommel, the previous one having broken when he tore it from the champion's armour.
Both the icon and the shell casing are hung on the tree, from branches about his chest level. The next item is not so easy to find a place for.
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As far as fortifications Sahaal's assaulted in his long service to the Eighth Legion, the Imperial Palace is definitely the most beautiful. Wide, high galleries with ornate columns and frescoed ceilings serve as killing grounds. Rich red Astartes lifeblood is spilt across gold-flecked marble floors. Statues of war heroes look down aquiline noses onto the dead and the living alike, judging in their own inscrutable way.
Sahaal turns at the sound of running footsteps. He's kneeling over a pair of Imperial Fists, pulling ammunition and supplies from their armour. Even as relatively close as the Raptors are to the outer walls, the fighting is as thick and heavy as he's ever seen it. The idea of supply lines here is a joke, and an unfunny one at that.
Behind him, Sal Gosg of his command unit skids on the cracked marble and comes to a stop. "Captain, we have to go. Now."
Sahaal stands up and looks him in the eye lenses. "Why? New orders?"
"No." In that one syllable, Sahaal hears something completely new to him. An Astartes' voice wavering. Not quite fear, but as damned close as Sal Gosg can get. "I don't think we're going to be getting any more orders for a while."
He can live without orders, no problem. But, right then, something deep down in Sahaal's gut hardens. Instinctively, he knows that something is very, very wrong. "What do you mean?"
"Lothar picked up a vox-channel, over in the other hall. It's the Sixteenth, Captain, they're screaming into the airwaves. They're saying the Warmaster is dead."
Sahaal shakes his head. The Warmaster, dead? The idea that you could kill Horus Lupercal, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, general in human history and the architect of the Rebellion is laughable. You might as well try and extinguish a star or create an orkoid diplomat. It's impossible.
But, as he tunes his helm's vox, the impossible is made reality. True to Sal Gosg's word, all of the Sixteenth Legion's channels are filled with weeping and wailing. A thousand hardened transhuman veterans, all mourning with one voice. He can hear officers he knows, men who have judged the fate of planets and razed civilisations to ash on the wind breaking down in his ears. Mostly, it is garbled gibberish, words reduced to meaningless jumbles of sound forced out through choked-up throats. Some of it, however, is more than audible.
"...our father, our father, our father..."
"...no! He is lost! We are lost..."
"...this is Lieutenant Nevarseran, I can confirm. Lupercal is... is. He is fallen, may the Powers have mercy..."
"...who did this, lord, who did this to you..."
"...damn the Emperor to a thousand hells for this..."
Slowly, Sahaal pulls off his helm, silencing the cacophony of voices. His black eyes glint in the faint light. He walks over to the nearest statue, a granite effigy of some regimental commander from Feal's World, her chest adorned with stone medals and carved citations. Without a word, he smashes his armoured fist into the statue's leg.
That strike is followed by another, and another, and another, and another, and another. Chunks of granite fly off, smashing against the marble floor tiles. Splinters slice his bare pale face, and blood streams down his face. He ignores it, and keeps punching. All his frustration, all his pent-up anger, all the memories of the comrades and brothers that have fallen for Horus and his rebellion, it all gets channelled into his balled-up fists.
He hears a scream of rage coming from somewhere nearby, and it takes him a second, in his anger, to figure out that it's him that's making it. A red haze descends over him, and his vision narrows. Only his fists and the stone under them remain in the entire universe. All of this. All the struggle, all the battles, all the death and despair that he and his Raptors endured because it was told to them that they could bring about a better Imperium. All for nought.
He knows, even through the anger. This was their one shot, and they threw it away. There will never be another. They have failed. Now all that remains is to find out what failure, and more importantly, fate, has in store for them.
Sahaal stops punching, and he drops his fists to his side. His fingers loosen. He loosens. He turns back to Sal Gosg.
"Order a full retreat. Now. I want every single Raptor still breathing back aboard the Umbrea Insidior as soon as possible. I don't care what targets they think they have, we're pulling out."
"Captain?"
Then, Sahaal says the words that make all of this final in his mind. "We're quitting Terra, Sal. It's over. We lost. All that's left is to pick up the pieces."
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He doesn't know where he can put this decoration. A fist-sized chunk of granite, a service medal still visible on the time-blurred stone, rests in his hand. Cracks spiderweb across its surface, testament to the force that he hit it with all those centuries ago. Like most of the rest of his baubles, he has drilled a hole in the middle of it, and strung a thick loop of cord through it.
It's much heavier than its size would suggest, and he places it on a few different branches before he finds one strong and thick enough to hold it. With the piece of statue placed, he turns back to the bag. The next trinket Sahaal picks out is also the first on his list not of human manufacture.
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One of the sniper's shots finally hits him, and in a way, he's glad. It means Sahaal finally knows what he's up against.
It strikes his left pauldron, and a swarm of angry red impact warning runes flash up on his helm display. He blinks them away, and glances down. A deep, thin furrow has been gouged across the midnight ceramite, taking with it a couple of painted-on unit citations. He'll need to paint them back on tonight, after he repairs the plate itself.
The shot was from a las-weapon, he can tell from the scorch marks, but he knew that already. It's hard to miss blue bolts of light searing through the low-hanging mist. It is the tight width of the scar, and the fact that it's cut through at least three layers of armour that lets Sahaal know what it came from. An Imperial Guard weapon, with its crude vat-grown focusing crystal arrays, would have have barely scratched the paint.
No. This is eldar work. Only they have laser weaponry powerful enough to cut like this. Behind his helm, Sahaal smiles. He hasn't fought eldar since Equixus, and after that? He feels he's due some revenge.
The only downside is that he'll have to use his bolter. Eldar snipers are too elusive for even his claws, and trying to get much closer will only get him shot through the eye. Even going from tree to tree like he did when he hunted down Guide would be risky. Ranged is the only way Sahaal can approach this.
He pulls his bolter from its mag-lock and readies, the familiar weight settling into his hands. With a flick of his thumb, Sahaal clicks the safety catch off. Carefully, he pokes out the skull-mouthed barrel and fires off a shell. A second later, and the dull crump of a detonation bounces off the densely packed trees. The eldar sniper is quick to respond, a las-bolt through the trunk so close to his head his helm systems note the temperature spike.
There is no way that wasn't intentional, and somehow, that makes it worse. Not only is he being toyed with, but that this xenos thinks that he can be toyed with and that Sahaal is that weak as to let him. He snarls. Time to kick it up a notch, as they say on Earth television.
A Primaris-issue shock grenade goes out first, the fist-sized cylinder landing by the sniper's perch. Blinding white light explodes out from it, accompanied by a burst of deafening, raucous noise. Two more explosives follow, a smoke canister and a frag grenade in quick succession. White phosphorus haze hisses out into the warm air, covering the forest floor with a low-hanging chemical fog. It forms a barrier nigh impenetrable to normal eyes, and Sahaal has to use his preysight to see the frag grenade go off.
It does so spectacularly. The miniature explosive detonates against the trunk, breaking into the bark with a hundred shrapnel saws. With a creak of splintered wood, the tree topples, taking with it the eldar sniper's perch. Swiftly, Sahaal whips round the trunk, his bolter up and the targeting reticles searching for his prey.
Almost immediately, he sets eyes on the sniper. The tree is falling fast, but he catches a few impressions before it hits the ground. Long thin limbs flailing against gravity, nimble fingers grasping for anything to arrest its fall. A hooded cloak, the same dull green as the forest canopy, gemstones woven into the fabric glittering in the light. Violet pinprick eyes staring at him from shadowed sockets, the hatred in them focused on him and him alone.
Then the tree falls below the smoke, and takes it out of sight. Sahaal grins. Now the hunt begins.
He swings out from behind the trunk, and with a jump pack-aided bound, leaps into one of the more venerable trees. The branches below him shudder, but hold. Looking down from his new perch, Sahaal watches as the sniper rolls with the fall and starts running north, its alien long rifle cradled in his arms. The Night Lord follows eagerly, going from treetop to treetop like a primitive ape with a pair of thrusters.
Leaves cascade down to the ground under his weight. The roar of the twin turbines cuts through the air like nothing before it, silencing any natural sound. Every few seconds, Sahaal fires off a shot from his bolter, an enticement to the xenos to keep running. Most miss, cratering the soft dirt around his prey's feet. A couple hit, one tearing a hole in the lavish cloak, one glancing off whatever armour is concealed under it with enough force that it leaves the sniper's left arm hanging limply by its side.
Sahaal's focus on the hunt is total, so when the trees run out and he finds himself at the edge of a small clearing, he almost falls. Gasping in surprise, he quickly jams his foot-claws into the thick bark to steady himself. The gap in the forest below is not a natural one. What looks like some sort of ruined structure of white alien stone stands in it, long left to the weeds and moss that now cover it. Most of it has collapsed into rubble hidden beneath the long grass, but one or two of the walls still stand, framing a freestanding arch that provides the clearing's centrepiece.
He activates his preysight again, and the world dissolves into the deep blues and bright orange and yellow shades of thermal vision. His head pans around the area, looking for heat signatures. There, by one of larger wall chunks, he sees a patch of shimmering red. With a blink, he deactivates the specialised lenses. Sahaal's world becomes high-contrast colour once again, and he looks again at the spot.
The preysight did not lie. A corner of the eldar's cloak pools out from behind the stone, the fabric a few shades of green too rich to be natural. Something unpleasant glitters in the Night Lord's black eyes. He draws his bolter for the second time today, and with a stroke of the trigger, he fires.
A shell smashes against the stone, driving the sniper from its temporary haven. It rolls into cover behind a broken pillar, and Sahaal's shells follow it. Usually, he wouldn't consider using his bolter in a situation like this, for why would he kill with a firearm when he could deploy the sharp purity of his blades? But, he is enjoying the role reversal in truth, firing down at a near-helpless target. Let the alien have a taste of its own tactics.
More shots break off ragged chunks from the pillar, and the sniper jerks from its hiding spot again. This time, Sahaal gives it no respite. As soon as it is out of sight, his grenades make it dash for the open. In this way he establishes a pattern. The sniper scuttles into shelter. He forces it out. Rinse. Repeat.
This goes on what feels like a few seconds, in the heat of the hunt, but what is according to his helm's chrono two and a half minutes. An eternity in a firefight. He sighs. Perhaps this might have to end soon. A shame, in his opinion, become this game of cat and mouse is quite fun. But, all good things must come to an end.
Reluctantly, he pulls out a pair of frag grenades and tosses them behind the windworn boulder the eldar is currently cowering against. They go off simultaneously, sending a ball of fire and shrapnel into the air. As soon as the sniper runs out into the open, bleeding and trailing smoke from its cloak, Sahaal draws a bead on it with his bolter and fires.
He misses. At the last second, the xenos dodges to the side, letting the bolt shell carve a divot in the earth. Sahaal curses in ugly Nostraman and aims again, but it slides behind the central arch. As he looks on, trying to calculate the best angle to get the bastard from, a small spark appears in the centre of the arch.
A sound like a whip-crack sounds through the clearing, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. More sparks flare into existence in the arch, the embers of some dying fire being relit and given new life. They pull together, forming a ball of light bright enough that Sahaal's already powerful flare-buffers dim even further to compensate. The ball expands, crackling with sorcerous purplish-blue energy, into a round, roiling portal, three meters by two in the middle of the bone-like arch.
Sahaal recognises it immediately. The arch must be an eldar transportation gateway, one of their strange devices halfway between magic and technology. He's seen them before, on Equixus, on Praetoria and on half a dozen other worlds. Urgency plucks at his mind, overriding everything else. He can't let the sniper escape.
In an instant, he launches himself from the tree and hits the ground, rolling into a run without a pause. His feet crush down the long grass as he sprints towards the arch, his breath ragged in his ears. The thin mist parts around his armoured form. Sahaal's world narrows again, his perception akin to optics focused on the gateway.
A flash of green on white, and he jerks his head towards it. The sniper darts out from behind the curving length of stone, its cloak flowing behind it. It stops an inch from the portal, and looks back at Sahaal's charging figure with a mix of arrogance and amusement on its elfin face. A delicate artist's hand reaches for a bag at its waist, and places it on a broken chunk of wall to its side. Then, with a flourish and the furious Night Lord only feet away, it turns and steps through to safety.
The portal snaps shut behind it with a burp of crackling ozone. Sahaal skids to a stop an arm's length for the now dead arch. A stream of curses come from his vox-grille, an indelicate mix of Imperial Low and High Gothic, Nostraman, Eighth Legion war-cant, Bar-standard English, the primitive prison-slang of his birth and a dozen other tongues. He leans his head back and roars, the static-laced howl of a hunter denied his prey. His balled-up hand pounds against the bone-like stonework of the gateway, but to no avail. Whatever it is made of is tougher than his gene-forged fist, and he is denied even that little satisfaction.
Sahaal steps back and tries to force down his anger. He opens up his helm's external vents, letting crisp forest air flow in. He takes a deep breath, and another, and another, until his choler subsides. Finally, when he feels like he isn't going to explode with rage, he reaches over and picks up the bag the sniper left.
It is a small pouch, made of some sort of soft cobalt velvet and sealed with an ornate bronze clasp. His armoured fingers unseal it, and tip the contents onto the chunk of stone. A tiny icon, shaped like an eldar rune, and a tube of paper tied with twine fall out. Carefully, Sahaal cuts the knot with his combat knife and unrolls the paper.
It is a message. That much is clear, but for a few long moments, he can't read it. As he stares at it, racking his brain for any clue as to what it could be written in, he recognises one of the words. Talonmaster. His title, scribed in some dialect of High Gothic he does not know. Sahaal, armed with this knowledge, moves his finger along the spidery letters, looking for the inevitable traces of human tongues he knows.
This is what spending ten thousand years in the Warp has done to him. Languages and parlances have sprung up, evolved on the lips on men and women who died long after he was lost, and died themselves, their linguistic remnants absorbed into other dialects to begin the cycle anew. So it goes, on into infinity. Whatever the sniper wrote in is a creation of one of these cycles, familiar but far removed.
Sahaal traces along the words with his finger, mouthing the syllables behind his helm in some absurd parody of a small child learning to read. Slowly, he gets the gist of it. This is what he thinks it says:
"You may be able to fight time and space, Talonmaster, but you cannot fight fate. Ulthwé will not be denied its vengeance."
He laughs, and crumples up the paper. Let them try.
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The paper he left at the ruins to wash away in the next rain. The message tube he filled with fyceline putty and used as a crude grenade back in mid-November. The rune, however, is hung between a pair of plastic pine cones.
For something only the size of a poker chip, it is surprisingly detailed. A stylised eye made of blocky lines and thin curves carved from some featherlight alien material weeping a single pearl tear. The cord of black silk that hangs through the abstract iris leads Sahaal to believe that it must have been some sort of wearable charm before he got his hands on it. Regardless, now it's a Christmas tree ornament.
Sahaal steps back and looks at his four additions. They might not be typical, but they're his and they're what he has to offer. His line of work, his life even, does not lend itself to collecting showy trinkets and decorations. War trophies will have to do. Perhaps that's what the book meant, that those celebrating should hang objects with memories behind them.
He's still not sure what all the little multi-coloured balls of metal and ceramic are in aid of though..
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And those were some intense memories. I couldn't help feeling that it might have been a bit cathartic for Sahaal to face them with each ornament he hung. Maybe some relief in being able to share them in his own way.
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The bird is charming.
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And Tom, thank you for sharing Sahaal's flashbacks with us. I love this nod to honoring both past and present.
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The bird is adorbs, I love it.
The fic is great. Intense and the descriptions are superb.